On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 10:57 AM, Monique Y. Mudama
<spam@bounceswoosh.org> wrote:
On Tue, Apr 20 at 7:31, B. Alexander penned:
>
> In my case, it appears the root of the problems are caused by
> bitrot. I probably need to come up with some method of rebuilding
> my sid boxes every so often. Prior to this, my rebuilds were done
> in 2000 and 2007...Maybe if I am going to run sid, I need to plan
> for an annual rebuild of the system...At least the
> workstations...
I've been running sid on a headless box since 2002 or thereabouts,
with config files copied from an even older RedHat box. No wipes /
rebuilds / etc. There may have been a few panicked moments along the
way, but I think almost all of them were hardware related. I may be
extraordinarily lucky, and I do think that the GUI packages add a lot
more complexity, or maybe simply a lot more packages and thus
opportunities for dependency problems.
Agreed. I have several servers that are running sid, and they don't have this type of problem. Most likely, because they are more static than a workstation. In addition, my servers don't have a GUI.
If by "bitrot" you mean that files are corrupted, I'd take a look at
my storage devices and filesystem settings.
No, no corruption.
If by "bitrot" you mean that config files and such are becoming
increasingly dated ... I do fight that all the time, or rather I keep
telling aptitude to keep my modified files, promise myself that I'll
eventually take a look at the differences, and almost never do.
It's more of a packaging issue. For instance, there have been several ABI changes, the most recent of which was the transition from kde3 to kde4. Packages getting left along the way.
Another thing is packages whcih seem to have gotten confused by versions:
luatex: Conflicts: texlive-base-bin (< 2008) but 2007.dfsg.2-8 is installed.
python-kde4: Depends: python-sip4 (>= <none>) but 4.10.2-1 is to be installed.
I don't know if it matters that I almost always use the curses
interface to aptitude; I usually get the updates, then let them sit
for a few days to give the bug reports a chance to roll in. Anything
that shows up in apt-listbugs gets put on "hold", or when time allows,
investigated and permitted. Anything that seems like an unnecessary
removal or generally "smells wrong" gets put on "hold" as well.
Periodically I check out what's on "hold" to see if the dependencies
are fixed yet.
Generally, I use the command line version. I admit, I do upgrade immediately, but at the same time, I try to choose "non-critical" boxes to upgrade first.
--b